


Paradise (is closer than it seems)

by CelestialSilences



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, At least I'm pretty sure that's what this is, Based heavily off of Boom, Bc I could never heart the Dreamies, Boom AU, By like a yearish, It's sad but, M/M, Magical Realism, Multi, Non-Linear Narrative, Polyamory, Supernatural Elements, idk if this is any good but I'm sick of it being in my drafts, soft and loving, they all care for each other so much, this is sweet too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-05 23:40:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20497271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CelestialSilences/pseuds/CelestialSilences
Summary: Park Jisung has everything he could ever ask for- until he doesn't. This is how he loses, and subsequently gets back, the people who make his life worth living.Inexplicably, there's something about this that feelsrightin a way Jisung can’t quite explain. He doesn’t feel out of place here, and although he has no idea where he’s walking, there’s a quiet certainty in his mind that he’ll reach a destination eventually. If anything, he feels less anxious than he has in weeks.It occurs to him then, the conclusion coming together so easily that he’s likely subconsciously known it for a while, that this is what happened to his friends. It has to be....Or maybe he passed out, fell off the roof, hit his head, and is now in some kind of weird coma dream, but Jisung is mostly sure it’s not that.Mostly.





	Paradise (is closer than it seems)

**Author's Note:**

> Me: I don't write angst  
Also me: *writes nothing but angst for NCT*
> 
> Seriously this was supposed to be about Dream being a teenage gang of rich delinquents, why does this always happen
> 
> (Also, disclaimer: Dream's parents irl are lovely people and the parents mentioned in this fic are in no way associated with them!)

Being alone is nothing new to Jisung. 

It’s a common side effect of being born to rich parents, and one that’s certainly not unique to him. His parents are always “occupied,” always “too busy to talk right now, Jisung,” and thus haven’t had a proper conversation with him in multiple years- he’s been counting. 

It’s been a fact of his life for so long that Jisung isn’t mad about it anymore, can’t be bothered to feel sad or upset. The sun shines, birds chirp, and Jisung’s parents don't love him. He used to be disappointed when his parents forgot his birthday, left him alone on Christmas and Chuseok and the like, but at some point he’d stopped hoping they’d be there at all, and that made everything a whole lot easier. 

But this year -Jisung’s eighteenth birthday- everything hurts infinitely worse than usual, like the pain he hasn’t felt for all of those years has finally come rushing in as a tidal wave of anguished disappointment and loneliness. There’s a reason for it, of course, but Jisung doesn’t like thinking about that too much.

(If he doesn’t, maybe it won’t hurt quite so badly.)

It’s eleven at night and Jisung is sitting in his family’s dining room. It’s the same as it’s always been, with its deep cobalt walls and golden crown moldings and handcrafted wooden ceiling. The same painting of a bland, vaguely forested landscape is hung on the wall across from where Jisung sits, and the same crystalline chandelier hangs over the table, bathing the room in a warm yellow glow. 

The silence, too, is omnipresent as ever, a constant Jisung has spent more than half of his childhood and the entirety of the past week with. Tonight the space around him feels empty, every sound he makes magnified by the lack of anything around it to absorb it. Everything echoes despite the dining room not really being big enough to warrant it. Jisung doesn’t mind- the extra noise helps him pretend he’s a little less alone. 

The dining room is set for a feast tonight, with the Park’s massive dinner table laden with food and drinks of all kinds. Everything from street food to restaurant-quality dishes are there, and at the center of it all is a birthday cake. It’s certainly not the most extravagant thing on the table, but it’s pretty, ringed round with white icing and with small dollops of whipped icing circling the top. The rest of the cake's top layer is layered with chocolate icing, and the whole thing looks quite delicious. 

Jisung doesn’t have much of an appetite. He hasn’t in a long time. The food will go untouched, picked up by the maids when Jisung goes to bed and either eaten by them or thrown out. The blatant waste should bother him, and somewhere deep in his conscience it does, but when he’d ordered everything he’d forgotten he’d be eating alone this year.

(Well, less forgotten and more hoped otherwise.)

But the lone candle on the cake is still lit, flame flickering brightly, and Jisung’s got a birthday to celebrate. 

Singing would be stupid and pointless when it’s just himself, so Jisung just leans in and makes his wish. There’s no forethought behind it- he only wants one thing. He makes sure to wish as hard as he can, tries to believe with every fiber of his being that it’ll come true.

He shuts his eyes delicately, takes a soft breath in, and blows. The candle goes out with no resistance, extinguished in a fraction of a second, and curls of blue-gray smoke drift upward into the air, filling the room with the faintest scent of ash. Jisung opens his eyes and finds everything’s still the same.

The table is set for seven. Only one chair’s been filled.

_Before_

Rich kids with too much money and time on their hands often try to fill the void left by their parents, or lack thereof, with a variety of things- luxuries, serial dating, sex, delicacies. None of it works, of course, because empty pleasures can’t replace a parent’s love.

But Jisung is different. He has  _ friends _ . And not “friends,” not the kind of people who would compliment him to his face and mock him behind his back, but genuine, true friends. With the kind of bond people tell stories about, the kind they only wish they could have, the kind people label as things like  _ platonic soulmates _ . 

Jisung would think often of the moment the seven of them met if he remembered it, but he doesn’t. Whatever moment it was happened so long ago, was so insignificant at the time that Jisung can’t recall it for the life of him. All he knows is that, ever-so-slowly, like the shift of the phases of the moon, he grew closer to the six people that make his life worth living, the change so gradual he didn’t notice until one day he woke up with five best friends and a boyfriend with nothing but the most nebulous idea of how it all happened. 

There’s Mark, who has dark hair, wide doe eyes, and an almost perpetual smile on his face. He’s the de facto leader of their little group, being the oldest and “wisest.” He’s bright and always laughing, witty and intelligent and delightfully awkward in a way that makes him impossible not to like. Although he technically has some authority over them due to his age, he never really uses it, instead putting up with far too much teasing with little more than a laugh in reply. 

Donghyuck dyes his hair blonde as often as he can even though his parents detest it, and he’s been doing it for so long now sometimes Jisung forgets what he looked like with dark hair. He’s sarcastic and clever and has a flair for being unnecessarily dramatic in a way that should be obnoxious but is instead just entertaining. He’s been dating Mark for about three years now, and although they constantly bicker about absolutely everything Jisung knows for a fact that they have the details of their wedding already planned out. 

Renjun is hands-down the best artist Jisung has ever seen, the kind of painter who will someday go down in history books for his skill. The only thing holding him back is that his parents don’t approve, but Renjun paints nonetheless, posting selling his work online until he gains the popularity he needs to make it in the art world. He’s got a fierce sarcastic streak and has absolutely no qualms about verbally demolishing anyone who annoys him, yet he treats his boyfriends, Jaemin and Jeno, with a truly touching softness. 

Jeno has a smile sweet enough to simultaneously cure cancer and infect anyone nearby with diabetes. Everyone likes to make fun of him and the fact that he’s “no fun,” due to his long history of bad jokes, but everyone adores him all the same. He’s also more than capable of kicking just about anyone’s ass, being a well-trained boxer, although he’s too nice to ever hurt someone out of the ring. That doesn’t stop Renjun and Jaemin from bragging about it whenever they see the need, though, and although Jeno always complains he has yet to tell them to stop.

Jaemin is bright and witty and also a massive nerd. He has a truly impressive library in his house, and even if he’s not visibly carrying a book at any given time, Jisung knows from personal experience that he has one somewhere. He’s incredibly eloquent -he has dreams of being a writer- and uses this talent mainly to flirt obnoxiously with his boyfriends and tease his friends endlessly. 

Chenle is loud and chaotic and fiery and Jisung loves him with every fiber of his being. He’s got the most beautiful voice imaginable, and although he likes to tease when Jisung asks him to sing he’s never once refused a request. He’ll mess with anyone and anything for his own personal amusement, and his target generally ends up being his boyfriend. As such, they can’t go a day without arguing over something stupid, although those “fights” generally end with kisses and promises of future dates. 

So yeah, Jisung’s friends are absolutely amazing. 

Absentee parents generally make it easy to sneak out, and the seven of them take full advantage of it- meeting up in a different house every night, spending entire nights at local arcades with facemasks pulled low under their faces to keep themselves hidden, laughing at everything and nothing and high on the intoxicating sensation of  _ freedom _ . Jisung’s friends make him feel like a real person rather than an inconvenience or his parents’ status symbol. Just seeing their faces makes him so happy it’s stupid, and he wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. 

And maybe they only get along so well because they’re all equally miserable- none of their parents love them, and Jisung’s actually one of the better ones off with the cool distaste his tend to treat him with. In the quiet darkness of the night, as they curl up with each other in rooms far too large and empty for the one person they normally house, stories spill out of disapproval, cutting insults, and abuse. It hurts Jisung to his core just thinking about some of the things he’s heard whispered in the blackness of midnight by unsteady voices, words cracking as they desperately attempt not to cry. 

But those quiet, painful moments always bring them closer together, make them a group with bonds stronger than steel. They’re impossibly close, knowing everything about each other and doing everything they can together. No one ever stays alone for long, not unless it’s by choice, and even then any self-imposed exile never tends to stick in a group as close-knit as theirs. 

Nothing in their lives is perfect, of course, but Jisung has known his six best friends for almost five years now, and he can say without a doubt they’re the best thing that’s ever happened to him. He can say that he’s happy without it being a boldfaced lie. 

And then Mark vanishes. 

The last time Jisung ever sees him is at a restaurant. They’ve been dragged to some lunch by their respective parents to be used as posturing chips, so their hobbies can be discussed like they aren’t in the room and the colleges they’ve gotten into can be bragged about. The first thing Jisung notices upon seeing Mark is that his expression is eerily stone-faced, and he refuses to even make eye contact with Jisung as he sits down with his parents. 

There’s something profoundly wrong about seeing Mark without a smile on his lips and brightness in his wide eyes, something that even the presence of his parents normally can’t dim. But that day he just looks exhausted, like he’s been asked to do far too much for far too long, and the only thing Jisung can see in his eyes is something dull and scarily dead. 

If someone were to ask Jisung about anything that happened at that lunch, he wouldn’t be able to answer. He stares at Mark the entire time, and if he isn’t staring at Mark he’s anxiously twisting his fingers together in his lap and thinking about Mark. He’s never seen him so empty-looking before, and it fills him with a quiet yet gut-wrenching sort of terror just to see, let alone consider the potential cause behind it. 

At some point Mark leaves to go to the bathroom and Jisung seizes his opportunity. Without stopping to care about what it might look like to everyone else present, he leaps up out of his seat with a hasty “excuse me,” and darts off to chase his friend down. 

The single-stall bathroom door is locked when Jisung reaches it, but when he asks to be let in Mark opens the door. His face is wet, like he’s just splashed water on it, and there are heavy dark circles below his eyes, ones previously hidden by the concealer now dripping down Mark’s wet cheeks. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” Mark scolds, but there’s no bite behind the words. “What are people going to think?”

“Mark-hyung, you look horrible,” Jisung breathes. “Are you okay? Did something happen?”

Mark stares at him for a long second, eyes scarily blank, and then shakes his head as if to clear it. “Yes- no. I’m fine, I promise. Just haven’t been sleeping a lot lately.”

From the looks of it, Mark probably hasn’t been sleeping at all. He’s barely looking at Jisung, and when he is, his eyes are unfocused like he’s looking through him rather than at him. His speech is too slow and there are odd pauses between his words, like he has to remind himself what he’s talking about occasionally just to get through a sentence. 

Jisung wants to help. It’s heartbreaking -and terrifying, honestly- to see Mark, always so strong and bright, suddenly vacant and dull. “Do you want us to come over tonight?” he asks. “I can text everyone.”

Mark gives a jerky little head shake. “No, I don’t think you should-” he tries, but Jisung refuses to be swayed. 

“I’ll let them know and then we can watch movies or something tonight, okay?” 

“Jisung-ah, really-” There’s something in Mark’s eyes that’s almost afraid. 

Jisung isn’t sure what’s wrong with Mark, but he knows there’s no way in hell he’s not at least going to try and help fix it. So he texts everyone -separately, so Mark doesn’t see it in their group chat- and informs them that he’s worried something might be wrong with Mark and that he wants everyone to meet up. He gets five  _ yes _ replies almost immediately, which is to be expected in a group like theirs, and feels a little better. Mark can’t brush off all six of them. 

But when everyone shows up at Mark’s house that night, greeting each other cheerily and carrying all manner of snacks and blankets, they knock on his door and find out he’s not there. The last the maids saw him he was heading to his room, but upon peeking inside to fetch him she discovered it was entirely empty. 

They aren’t all that worried, initially- Mark probably just wants some time alone. His parents, though generally not around, are incredibly overbearing and judgmental when they do bother to spend time with their son. Mark has places he goes when he wants to spend a few hours just getting away from people, and he always comes back from them quickly enough, looking bright and refreshed. 

So Donghyuck texts him, lets him know they’re spending the night together at Jaemin’s place. The six of them have a good time watching movies and eating junk food and playing Mario Kart, and although concern quietly weighs on their collective minds they all mutually agree to give Mark the space he needs. He’ll come back when he’s ready, they’re sure. 

It isn’t until the next morning that they find out something’s wrong. 

Mark’s parents -their personal maid, more accurately- call Donghyuck at eight in the morning, asking where he is. A bleary-eyed and still half-asleep Donghyuck replies that he doesn’t know, and the response he receives to that has him immediately shaking everyone awake. 

“Mark’s missing,” he says, a note of poorly-concealed panic in his voice, and everyone snaps into instant alertness.

“Didn’t he just spend the night out?” Jaemin asks. While Mark normally comes home before dawn when he spends time alone, it’s not entirely unheard of for him to stay out all night.

Donghyuck shakes his head. “That’s the thing, though. They’re saying he never left home at all.”

Confused glances are exchanged. 

“What?” Chenle asks. “Are you sure Mark’s parents aren’t just being, y’know, his parents? Famously neglectful and stupid?” 

The words are cutting but accurate- Mark's parents are pretty much the word “negligent” personified. They’ve left him behind at social functions multiple times, the earliest being when he was just five years old. When he was nine they forgot him at a gala and didn’t notice he was gone for two full days. There’s a special brand of hatred in their group reserved exclusively for the Lees and the way they treat their son. 

Donghyuck doesn’t reply immediately, as he’s listening to the person on the other end of the phone. “Okay, we’ll be right over,” he says to whoever it is, and hangs up. “The police are there. They want to ask us a few questions.”

“Isn’t it a little early for the police?” Jisung questions. “He hasn’t even been missing for a day. He may not even be missing at all.”

Donghyuck shrugs, and although the action is nonchalant there’s something worried in his eyes. It’s a weird look to see on him when he’s normally so outwardly flippant. “It sounded serious,” he says. 

So they pull themselves into some kind of presentable state and head back over to Mark’s house. It’s strange to see his parents there, in their fancy outfits that cost as much as a new car apiece and with perfectly false tears on their cheeks- Jisung’s never seen them anywhere that wasn’t a social function. It makes the whole situation seem a little more serious, and an inexplicable, quiet dread begins to curl in Jisung’s stomach.

The police questioning is quick, as none of them really know anything, and soon enough they’re the ones asking questions about the whole situation. Jisung makes sure to mention that Mark had seemed a little strange the last time they’d talked, but when the cop talking to him suggests he might have been on drugs, he concludes the police likely won’t be of much help. 

The officers don’t like answering their questions, but Donghyuck has spent enough time in Mark’s house to have endeared himself to the maids there, and they’re more than happy to chat about everything they’ve heard. And the more Jisung learns, the more confused he becomes. 

The whole thing is just plain  _ weird _ . Every new fact makes Mark’s disappearance sound less like a disappearance and more like the opening to a Sherlock Holmes novel. 

Mark’s phone, keys, and shoes were found undisturbed in his room. The police rule out the chances of a kidnapping almost immediately- there’s no signs of a break-in or struggle anywhere in the house, and the CCTV that rings the Lee’s property never caught anyone entering, or, much more unusually, Mark leaving home at all. There’s no sign he went anywhere but his room after returning home from lunch that day. 

So no one knows what could’ve happened to him. Mark’s not in the house, but he certainly never left it. 

The whole ordeal rapidly turns into a local legend of sorts over the course of the next few days, with people claiming everything from Mark being killed by one of the maids to him being stolen away by spirits. The murder theory is popular initially following Mark’s disappearance, but when the police finally declare that a killing or kidnapping is incredibly unlikely, the ghost stories gradually gain more and more credence until the story feels almost unbelivable with the amount of exaggeration added to each telling.

With no real evidence to work with, investigation is left open but unsolved, and it’s officially declared that Mark is a runaway. His parents hold a funeral nonetheless. Donghyuck flatly refuses to attend, stating that there’s no point in it if Mark isn’t dead, and everyone else follows his lead. They spend the day of the funeral hanging out at Donghyuck’s house, talking about everything but the elephant in the room. 

They don’t quite grieve- grieving would properly cement the idea that Mark is dead or truly missing. Instead, the six of them hold firmly onto the hope that, no matter what happened to Mark, he’ll be back soon. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t a little more muted, the atmosphere around them perpetually gray as they worry and wonder about the safety of their friend. 

It’s unthinkable, too, that Mark would hide something from them- a group like theirs has no secrets, and Mark’s never been the type to sit on his feelings until they reach unmanageable proportions. At the very least it would show on his face, in his demeanor, as Mark’s heart is very much permanently attached to his sleeve. 

Donghyuck especially is suffering Mark’s disappearance, and there’s a certain tenseness in the way he says Mark’s name now, like he’s trying to cover up a note of betrayal in his tone whenever he speaks of his boyfriend. 

Everyone comforts him where they can, doing their best to distract him -and themselves- with hangout sessions and dumb jokes. It works until it doesn’t- when there’s an awkward lull in conversation because Mark isn’t there to fill it, when Jaemin buys movie tickets and gets seven without even thinking, when Donghyuck stuffs his hands in his pockets as he walks because Mark’s not there to tangle their fingers together. 

Mark was their direction, their unspoken leader whether they realized it or not, and being without him feels a little like they’ve been gutted, like a part of their collective soul has been lost. 

Something about this all feels foreboding, too, like it’s a precursor to something else. Hopefully Jisung’s just imagining the feeling, because he’s not sure what he’d do otherwise, but there’s a twist in his gut every time he thinks of Mark that leaves him not quite sure. 

_After_

There’s a solar eclipse coming- a total one, the kind that only happens every few hundred years or something like that. Renjun had first mentioned it a few months back, suggesting they all watch it together. Donghyuck had teasingly called him a space geek, and Renjun had immediately started angrily chasing him around whoever’s house they’d been in that day, so the suggestion was quickly forgotten. 

But when one of the maids had mentioned it in passing the other day, Jisung had decided he was going to watch, if only to pretend things haven’t changed as much as they have. He’s been thinking about it a lot ever since despite the fact that it’s still a week away. 

He’s never heard anything about solar eclipses being magic or granting wishes or anything like that, but it can't hurt to watch. At worst he’ll get to see a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event that he’ll be too sad to properly appreciate, and at best, well, who knows? It’s admittedly a foolish hope, but it’s not exactly like Jisung has anything else to cling to. 

All his life, Jisung has a been firm skeptic of the supernatural- he’s nothing like Renjun, who swears he’s seen aliens in the night sky, or Jaemin, who scoffs at the mere mention of psychics and ghost stories and yet flatly refuses to play Bloody Mary. 

But at this point, all alone and left with nothing but an unsolved mystery in place of a friend group, Jisung is willing to consider just about anything. 

Eclipses used to foreshadow disasters in ancient cultures, right? Maybe there’s some symbolism there or something. Some very on-the-nose symbolism, considering just how much of a disaster Jisung’s life currently is, but symbolism nonetheless. 

Or maybe it is aliens, like Renjun’s always talking about. Abducting him and all of his friends for knowing too much. They’d missed Jisung, for some reason, but there’s probably a way to find or summon them. 

Or is that demons? Jisung very much doubts his friends made any deals with the devil -they can be dumb, but they’re not _ that _stupid- but maybe it was someone they knew. He honestly wouldn’t put it past some of his friends’ parents to not take such an option if it was offered to them. 

...God, this is all pointless, isn’t it? 

Trying to figure out what supernatural curse stole away his friends like something out of an urban legend won’t bring them back, and it certainly doesn’t help Jisung feel any better about the whole thing. He sighs. 

He’s been trying to stop thinking about them, because it makes him impossibly sad, but Jisung’s life is so deeply intertwined with that of his friends that he doesn’t really have much else to think about. It’s not like he has a busy social calendar to distract himself anymore. 

At least the thoughts aren’t self-deprecating, most of the time- only on his worst days does he blame himself for what happened. There wasn’t really anything he could’ve done, he knows, but sometimes it’s hard to remind himself of that. Especially when he’s the only one left of their seven, and he has nothing else to blame for their disappearances. 

He tries to tell himself that that’s not what his friends would want for him, but it’s growing harder to do that by the day, with every additional second he spends alone. 

Hopefully something will change soon- that’s all he can dare to wish for. 

_Before_

Donghyuck vanishes next, gone one night without so much as a word or a text goodbye. 

While the event itself is unexpected, no one’s surprised upon hearing the news. Where Mark goes, Donghyuck follows, always with a snarky comment and a smirk and an unwavering, quiet devotion, the kind that doesn’t need to be spoken aloud to be affirmed. 

Mentally, he’d been gone since the moment Mark had gone missing. Although he’d hung out with everyone like normal, trying his best to play flippant and unbothered, Jisung hadn’t seen him genuinely smile or laugh once. His expression was always distant, always impossibly closed off, and sometimes when he thought no one was looking Jisung would see the walls come down and the look on Donghyuck’s face was unbearably sad and _ lost _. 

It’s how things have gone for all of them- they try to stay bright and positive during the day, when the sun melts away their worries and anxieties and reminds them they have lives to live, but at night those fears crystallize into fierce worry for their friend and each other. 

The strange thing about Donghyuck’s disappearance is that he’d left so much behind- it’s eerily reminiscent of what happened with Mark. Jaemin had gotten into his house the day after he’d disappeared with the excuse of retrieving a hoodie Donghyuck had borrowed -his parents were too busy loudly informing the whole world they were grieving to be suspicious- and he’d come back with a variety of items stolen from his room. No one asked why he’d taken them, despite having no good reason to; everyone grieves differently, and if that’s how Jaemin gets his closure, no one’s going to stop him from doing it.

“His mom bought that excuse?” Chenle scoffs upon Jaemin’s return. They’re in Jeno’s room today, sprawled across various pieces of furniture and desperately attempting to stick to some semblance of their old routine. The place where Mark and Donghyuck like to sit -a purple beanbag chair big enough for the two of them to cuddle- is left empty. “Everyone knows Donghyuck-hyung wears nothing but his leather jacket. She’s an idiot.” 

Chenle’s been fierier than usual lately, picking fights with everyone he can. He’s restless all the time, a tiger in a cage who’s spotted meat on the other side of the bars, snappish towards everyone outside of their circle even at the best of times. Jisung’s been trying to stick close to him, to keep him from starting something he can’t finish, but it’s an uphill battle most days. It’s Chenle’s way of grieving, even if it’s not healthy, and his emotions are far more powerful than Jisung’s attempts at calm rationality could ever be. 

He’s right about the jacket, though. Mark had bought it for Donghyuck’s birthday when he was fourteen from a thrift store as a joke, and at the time it was both far too big on him and nowhere close to his fashion taste. Yet Donghyuck had liked it, strangely enough -although, looking back on it, the giver likely mattered to him far more than the gift- and had started wearing it every chance he got. 

The jacket’s even older and more torn up now, and the leather is far from in its prime, but Donghyuck makes jokes about wearing it to his wedding someday. He never leaves it anywhere if he can help it- it’s practically a symbol of his and Mark’s relationship. Jaemin slings it across the back of Jeno’s desk chair and Renjun immediately leans over to straighten it out. 

The atmosphere is quieter than it’s ever been that day, and the loss of two of their closest friends sits heavily between everyone. Still, though, there’s an absence of outright grief, as everyone clings to the idea that Mark and Donghyuck aren’t actually gone for good. 

“Where do you think he went?” Jeno asks at last, when the weight of all they’re avoiding gets to be too much. “Maybe he’s looking for Mark-hyung?”

“No one knows where he is, though,” Renjun points out from where he’s curled into his boyfriend’s side. “There’s nothing he can do the police can’t.”

“Maybe Mark-hyung told him something he didn’t tell the rest of us,” Chenle suggests, a note of something bitter in his voice.

There’s silence for a moment as everyone considers the possibility. It’s not impossible- Mark and Donghyuck are closer than close, and if Mark was going to tell anyone about whatever he’s doing, it’d be him. 

“But hyung didn’t even take his phone with him when he left,” Jeno says, brows furrowed a little as he thinks. “And if Hyuck-ah were going to look for him, why would he leave his jacket and phone too?”

“And why wouldn’t he tell us?” Jisung adds, because it feels good to bring up the sting of betrayal he feels whenever they talk about Donghyuck’s disappearance. “We could’ve helped him.”

No one replies to that, and Jisung knows it’s because everyone agrees. 

“Doesn’t this whole thing seem _ weird _ to you?” Renjun asks at last, a note of frustration in his voice. “Neither of them would leave like this without telling us, not without their phones.”

“Well, they didn’t get kidnapped- the police ruled that out completely,” Jeno reminds. “So what do you think happened instead?”

Renjun lets out a harsh sigh and runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. It’s just- not right.”

Jisung’s inclined to agree, but “not right” certainly isn’t an explanation. 

“Maybe it was magic,” Chenle says, voice dripping with sarcasm. 

Jisung scoffs. “Yeah, right.”

“Maybe it was,” Jeno says, and Jisung can’t tell if he means it or not. 

“It’s an explanation, at least,” Renjun points out dryly. “Better than just saying what it wasn’t.”

“It’s a nice thought, better than the alternative, but magic isn’t real,” Jaemin adds. His voice is kind as he speaks, gentle, like he’s trying to break bad news.

“Can you explain what happened, then?” Renjun challenges. “Mark-hyung disappears out of the blue with no signs of him leaving at all. Then Donghyuck-hyung does the exact same thing not even a week later. We all know they aren’t runaways, so it has to be something else.”

Jaemin doesn’t reply- he doesn’t look like he knows what to say. 

“Let’s say it is magic,” Jeno says, though he sounds doubtful. “How do we figure out what exactly took hyungs?”

“Google,” Chenle suggests with a snort. 

“I know some places I can check,” Renjun says, already looking lost in thought. “Stuff that’s more reliable than what’s online.”

“And the rest of us will help,” Jeno says, shooting everyone else in the room a look that’s likely meant to be intimidating but comes out more vaguely pleading than anything else. “We’re gonna figure this out.”

There’s a certain strength that comes from having a plan, one that lightens the atmosphere a little bit. They have a direction now, a concrete goal. Everything feels more manageable. 

Jisung feels more sure than he has in a long time that things aren’t going to take a further turn for the worse. They’ll figure out what happened to Mark and Donghyuck, and maybe, maybe, they’ll figure out a way to get them all back.

_After_

For someone who’s been alone for so much of his life, Jisung’s doing a remarkably poor job at getting used to it again. Some mornings he wakes up and checks his phone before his eyes are even fully open, ready to read through whatever messages his friends’ group chat had produced overnight -generally either memes or everyone freaking out about a new art project of Renjun’s- only to find his phone bereft of notifications and have realization hit like a brick. 

It would help if he had things to do to distract himself, but as Jisung’s still out of school to mourn -he has been since Mark left all those weeks ago- and has no real desire to go back, he has nothing to fill his days but the constant reminders all around him that he’s entirely alone. 

The maids keep shooting him sympathetic looks when they think he’s not looking, and he’s noticed they’ve been making his favorite foods for every meal. Their concern is touching, but Jisung wishes they’d stop- pity just makes the whole thing worse. 

If his friends could see him now, he knows they’d wouldn’t want to watch him be miserable like this. At even the first sign of sadness they’d do something dumb like pull him into a group cuddle session or buy him convenience store snacks or just make bad jokes until he couldn’t help but crack a smile. Sometimes they know before even he does when he’s upset. 

But they can’t see him, and that’s the problem. They’re never going to see him ever again, so Jisung has to learn how to deal with crushing sadness on his own. 

He’d read somewhere once that keeping to a routine was a good way to help manage grief, even if it was just a small one. That having a purpose and a schedule made it just a little bit harder to crumble under the impossible weight of loss. 

Jisung could fence, maybe, but something about practicing just feels weird. Too normal in the wake of him losing everyone he cares about. But maybe normal is good. Better than sitting around all day moping, which is what Jisung’s schedule has been for the past few days. 

Today, maybe, he’ll try and practice for an hour. Just to make sure his skills aren’t slipping, although they definitely have, from his impromptu hiatus. 

He doesn’t bother putting on his actual fencing outfit -it’s unnecessary when he’ll probably just be doing glorified warm-ups today- and instead just grabs his foil and heads to his practice room. It’s a place as familiar to him as his own bedroom, and one Jisung’s spent much of his life in. He opens the door and gets halfway through its threshold before spotting movement in his peripherals and freezing. 

There’s a figure standing there in the center of in the practice room, clad in fencing gear from the neck down and standing with their back turned to him. It’s not a maid- they’d never wear anything other than their standard uniform. The person’s stance clearly speaks to some form of experience, as they stand with their feet planted and body slightly lowered as if they’re ready to fight an invisible foe across the mat. Their foil is held in front of them with the blade tilted skyward, a textbook-perfect ready position.

Jisung stares. If they’re an intruder, they’re a strange one- who breaks into someone’s house to practice fencing? He doesn’t say anything, instead just watches the person stand stock still in the midst of the practice room, strangely familiar in their stance and in the way the short strands of their rose gold hair fall across their face. 

_ Hey, wait a minute _\- 

The figure turns and looks him dead in the eyes, and Jisung finds he’s staring at himself.

He can’t breathe. 

_ Oh god oh god oh god- _

At some point his hand has come up to clap over his mouth as if to block a scream, but all of the air has left this lungs so there’s nothing left to scream with and he’s not sure he could even if he wanted to because _ he’s fucking looking at himself what the fu _-

Jisung blinks, and it’s gone. 

When he shuts his eyes, all he sees is the sharp, judgemental gaze of his own face, dark gaze boring holes into him. It’s burned into his brain so deeply Jisung’s sure he’s going to die before he forgets it, although his death may not be as far away as he’d once thought. 

He stumbles back until his back slams into the door behind him, and Jisung eaches behind him to search for the door handle without turning around. His mind is entirely blank, all rational thought drained out of his mind in the face of sheer, all-consuming panic, and the only thing he can think to do is not turn his back to the spot _ it _ just was. 

Finally, after a few frantic seconds of blind searching, he slaps a hand on the handle. Suddenly, just as he’s about to turn it, the idea occurs to him that when he tries, it’ll be locked. It’s a terrifying idea to consider, and for the briefest of seconds he’s too scared to find out, entirely petrified by the prospect, but it passes in the blink of an eye and leaves behind something cold and numb in its wake. 

Gingerly, he tries the handle. The door swings open easily, and Jisung very quietly and very quickly leaves the room and avoids even looking in its general direction for the rest of the day. 

He’s going to watch a movie. Maybe a few movies. He’s going to make a whole lot of popcorn and curl up in bed and pretend whatever he just saw didn’t happen. Maybe he’ll pick up a new hobby in the coming days- birdwatching sounds nice. All Jisung knows is that he won’t be going anywhere near the fencing room again for a long, long time. 

(Later, when he’s getting changed for bed that night, he’ll notice his fencing outfit isn’t quite where he left it. A chill will run down Jisung’s spine, he’ll squint his eyes shut for a long second, and he’ll banish all thoughts of it from his mind as best as he can.)

(It won’t work.)

_Before_

Renjun’s been withdrawing from everyone lately. It’s subtle, the sort of thing the average person might chalk up to him just being busy or stressed, and although he has more than ample cause to be both of those things Jisung -and everyone else- knows him better than that. 

It would be worrying enough normally, but with Mark and Donghyuck’s disappearances still a constant in everyone’s mind, it’s especially concerning. 

Jeno’s the first one to notice, unsurprisingly, and he immediately texts everyone and demands they meet up to spend some quality time with Renjun. With the way they’ve been sticking together lately, it’s certainly not hard to get plans made for a sleepover. 

Of course, because fate apparently likes to fuck with Jisung and his friends, Renjun’s parents force him to go to a charity gala that very evening. Ironic how his family seems to only intervene at the worst possible times. Still, there’s nothing they can do about it, so they make plans for the next day and tell Renjun not to suffer too much at the event. 

Everything seems fine when they spend the evening together, although is Jaemin is a bit clingier than usual and Jeno’s a little more reserved. They’re all worried, all perpetually on edge, the only outcome to be expected when it feels like collectively they’re just waiting for something to happen. Still, though, they try to have a good time, chalking up the anxiety and the ominous atmosphere to them just being paranoid. 

It works until Jisung wakes up after passing out on Chenle’s living room floor to see Jaemin on the phone, clearly trying not to cry, and Jeno resting his head on his boyfriend’s shoulder. Tears are dripping down his cheeks and he’s clutching Jaemin’s hand so tightly his knuckles are white. 

“Alright, thank you,” Jaemin says plaintively, voice cracking as he speaks. “Please call back if he- if he-” he can’t finish the sentence before he’s breaking down into tears. 

Jeno presses a gentle kiss to his hair and whispers something that only makes Jaemin bury his head in his chest and let out a muffled sob. 

“Wha-” Jisung begins. Both of them turn to look at him, devastation personified, and he doesn’t bother to finish his question. “I- I’m so sorry, hyungs.”

Sorrow curls in his stomach, lead-weighted and choking, and tears prick Jisung’s eyes. The mere thought of Renjun being gone is an impossible one to even consider- even if he’s not always around, he’s a steady presence in their lives nonetheless, an irreplaceable part of their group. It doesn’t even seem real, yet; it feels like Renjun’s just in the bathroom, and he’ll be out any second to tease his boyfriends for crying while folding them into impossibly tight hugs. 

Jeno smiles weakly at him, lower lip trembling. “It’s, it’s o-” with a shudder he breaks down into quiet sobs, covering his face with both hands. Jisung quietly moves to hug him, leaving wet imprints behind when he presses his face into Jeno’s blonde hair. 

Behind him, Chenle stirs. “What’s going on?” he mumbles, clearly not yet awake. 

Jisung glances at him, then at Jeno and Jaemin, and makes the decision to take Chenle out of the room to fill him in on what’s going on. Chenle’s eyes fill with tears before Jisung’s even finished his sentence, which is good, because Jisung isn’t sure he could’ve gotten all of the words out he needed to without bursting into tears of his own. They spend a couple of minutes out in the hallway just clutching each other and crying, wondering how something so terrible could’ve happened to Renjun, to Jaemin and Jeno, and why some cruel higher power decided they deserved it. 

When they walk back into the room after drying their tears, clutching each other’s arms like lifelines, Jaemin and Jeno seem to be intensely discussing something. When Jaemin catches sight of them he immediately starts to speak with the kind of passion he only has when he’s truly set on something. 

“Something else is happening here,” Jaemin says, a newfound steel in his voice. The tear tracks on his face are still shining, creating twin lines down his cheeks. “They didn’t run away, they weren’t murdered. It’s something different.”

“Are you sure, though,” Jeno begins delicately. He sounds like he’s said the same thing before. “that it’s really-”

“-They aren’t dead,” Jaemin cuts him off fiercely. “You know they aren’t. And Renjun-ah wouldn’t leave us.” There’s absolutely no uncertainty in his voice. 

While Jisung’s not really the type to believe in soulmate bonds or friendship telepathy or the like, he can’t deny that, inexplicably, he can’t quite bring himself to believe that Mark or Donghyuck or Renjun are really dead or gone. Maybe it’s denial, maybe it’s misplaced hope, but something seems too off about everything that’s happened for him to just accept the easiest answer. 

“We have to figure out what’s happening and how to stop it,” Jisung agrees. Next to him, Chenle nods, albeit a bit uncertainly. 

“And how to get everyone back,” Jaemin adds. There’s a note of heartbreaking desperation in his voice.

“Renjun-hyung might have known,” Chenle suggests. “He said he was going to look into it.”

Renjun’s smart and observant in an understated sort of way- he doesn’t always show it off, but he picks up on things other people don’t, draws conclusions most people can’t see. It’s part of what makes him such a good artist. If anyone’s managed to figure out at least a little bit of what’s going on, it’s him. 

There’s a moment of silence wherein Jaemin and Jeno exchange a very weighted look. Chenle starts to look sorry he mentioned Renjun at all. 

“We could go to his house, maybe,” Jeno says after a second. “See what’s there.”

“Are you sure?” Jisung asks, because if they can barely hear the name of their boyfriend without having a breakdown, he doubts Jaemin and Jeno are going to be able to survive in a room full of traces of his presence. 

“We’ll be fine,” Jaemin says forcefully, like he can speak the words into truth if he tries hard enough.

So the four of them head to Renjun’s house, Jeno batting his eyes at his boyfriend’s parents and getting the four of them in the house easily enough. From there it’s a short walk to their destination. 

They walk into Renjun’s room slowly, like one would enter a crime scene, and glance around warily. It’s the same as Jisung’s always remembered it- art hanging everywhere, mostly paintings with occasional charcoal sketch tacked up on the wall, and generally untidy in a way that Jisung’s always thought felt like _ home _. 

There’s an unfinished painting on the easel in one corner of Renjun’s room, another staple of the space, and Jisung’s first thought upon seeing it is how it’s so odd to see a painting of Renjun’s that’ll never be finished. He’s the type to never abandon any art project he decides he likes, going so far as to miss social events and directly defy his incredibly strict parents when inspiration strikes. He was late to his own birthday party one year because he was finishing up a painting. 

This particular piece is gorgeous, as Renjun’s works always are- it’s a field of resplendent flowers lit by a midday sun just off-canvas, the sky a vibrant azure entirely unmarred by clouds. Figures are standing in the field, the only unfinished part of the painting minus a few unfinished swaths of sky and some flowers yet to be blessed with color. There are seven of them, most just barely fleshed out beyond skin tone and outlines, and only two are properly finished. 

Their faces look familiar, and Jisung looks at them closer to try and figure out who it is. Renjun frequently paints people he knows -Jisung himself has been the subject of several of his friend’s paintings- and if Renjun knows them, it’s not too much of a stretch to assume Jisung does too. 

“Hey guys, look at this,” Jaemin calls, and Jisung turns away from the painting to look at him. “I found his journal, I think.” He’s holding it tightly, almost reverently, like the last traces of Renjun will disappear from it if he lets it go. 

“Is that his diary?” Chenle asks, looking for a moment like he’s going to tease. Then he seems to think better of it, his expression sobering. “What’s it say?”

“Should we be reading it at all? It might be private,” Jeno points out. 

Jaemin, who’s already flipped open the notebook and begun reading, shakes his head. “It’s not, it’s- notes, I think?”

“Perfect,” Jisung says, moving to read over his shoulder. 

_ It’s getting worse. I almost want to tell Jaemin-ah and Jeno-yah, but I don’t want them worrying about me when it isn’t too serious yet. Stress-based hallucinations aren’t super uncommon- they’ll probably go away when we get Mark-hyung and Donghyuck-hyung back. _

_ There are flowers growing on everything, some days. It would be beautiful if I wasn’t constantly running into things because of them. I keep getting bruises from bumping into the edges of my desk. Sometimes I can’t paint because flowers are covering my easel, but that’s fine. I should be focusing on research anyway. _

_ Everything I’ve read suggests magic like this has to be caused by either an entity or an object, though I can’t think of anything that might fit that description. There’s nothing we all spend enough time with to do something like this, unless Chenle-yah’s secretly a witch or something. _

Jisung lets out a surprised scoff despite the creeping horror growing in his gut as he reads. 

_ I don’t know what could do this, but more importantly I don’t know why. There’s no reason for this to be happening to us. I need to- _

That’s where that particular entry ends, and as Jaemin flips through the rest of the much-shorter pages of the notebook, the look on his face grows gradually more and more upset. Finally, as he reaches the end of it, he slaps the cover shut with a huff. 

“So Renjun-ah didn’t figure anything out,” Jaemin surmises, poorly-suppressed frustration seeping into his tone. He looks almost like he’s about to start crying again. “We still don’t know anything.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t still get them back,” Jeno says comfortingly, laying his head on Jaemin’s shoulder. 

“Yeah, we’ve still got all sorts of things to research,” Chenle adds. “We just have to work harder.”

“Okay,” Jaemin says, voice a little wobbly. “We’ll save them. No matter what.”

Jisung really hopes he’s right.

  
  


_After_

Jisung hasn’t been sleeping very much lately. It had started off as anxiety-based insomnia, something he’s by no means unfamiliar with, but as time has passed the stress has started to come from what happens when Jisung finally does succumb to sleep. 

Nightmares have started to plague what little rest he does get, and although he has yet to remember one for longer than five minutes after waking, the physical side effects stick with him for hours- sweaty palms, trembling all over, fierce nausea, and a creeping, unshakable paranoia with no clear cause. It’s miserable, to say the least, and the worst part is that Jisung can’t do anything except feel awful all the damn time and hope it eventually goes away. 

And then there are the Incidents. 

He tries not to think about the things he’s been seeing too much, because even giving a proper name to them in his mind makes them terrifyingly real. But there’s no way around it- they _ are _real. Either that or Jisung’s finally cracked, and he really doesn’t want to consider that option. 

The same thing has happened again several times since the first Incident in his practice room, and every time it does Jisung gets so scared he swears soon he’ll have a heart attack. He’s getting scared to walk around corners, to glance into rooms, to look at anything other than his phone if he can help it because there’s always a chance he’ll see _ it _. 

It only exacerbates his paranoia, too, because it’s all too easy to constantly wonder if the eyes of his clone are on him, watching just out of easy sight. And while Jisung can’t know for certain, he feels like a not-insubstantial portion of the nightmares he’s been having have had something to do with the thing he’s been seeing. 

So all in all the past week or so has been hell for Jisung, to put it lightly. And he has absolutely no idea how to make it any better. 

Somehow, Jisung feels like Renjun would know what to do. He didn’t know how to handle his own hallucinations, but Jisung still feels like he could figure out a way to help somehow. But that thought just makes everything worse- it’s a harsh reminder that Jisung has literally no one he can go to for help with whatever this is. His parents would have him institutionalized before he could finish a sentence. 

He misses everyone so badly it aches, and not even for their ability to potentially figure out what’s wrong with him anymore. No, all Jisung wants at this point is a warm hug from the people he loves. If Chenle were here, he’d keep the nightmares away easily; the only complaint Jisung has when they share a bed is his boyfriend’s tendency to hog all the blankets. If everyone else were back, he knows they’d be able to help somehow- his friends are too smart and resourceful to just let him sit and suffer. They’d figure out something. 

That thought makes him even sadder, and Jisung quickly rubs his eyes before the sharp sting of tears behind them manifests into actual crying. God, he needs to get more sleep. What would his friends think if they could see him now?

(He can’t bring himself to care, honestly, just so long as he could be with them again.)

  
_Before_

“Whoa, what happened to your mirror?”

They’re in Jeno’s room, having just arrived after spending the night at Chenle’s. The four of them have hit a point that’s bordering on codependent by now- Jisung can’t remember the last time he’s been alone for longer than ten minutes. 

Normally it would worry him -it should worry him- but Jisung can’t bring himself to do anything other than eagerly accept the comfort that being with his friends provides. There’s a not-insubstantial part of him, too, that hopes that if they stick together, no one else will disappear. 

Jeno glances at Jaemin, squinting in confusion for a second before his face clears with understanding. “You see it t- I mean, I accidentally hit it with a water bottle and it shattered.”

The mirror has a spiderweb of cracks running across its surface, but none of the glass has actually fallen off of it Although Jisung has no idea what a mirror that’s been hit with a water bottle might look like, something about that explanation seems vaguely _ off _. 

Something about Jeno’s been a bit _ off _ too- lately, he’s been nervous in a way Jisung has never seen before. He’s normally cool and collected, all easy smiles and a generally relaxed demeanor, but recently he’s been constantly on edge and doing a poor job of hiding it. He moves constantly, always playing with his clothes or his hair or the fingers of whoever’s hand he’s holding, smiling too quickly and thinly to be quite believable, laughing at things that aren’t funny. 

Jisung would blame it on the Renjun-sized hole in his friend’s heart, but the way Jeno’s acting isn’t out of grief. Jeno grieves quietly, his sorrow manifesting in the low set of his shoulders and in how he subconsciously tucks himself into Jaemin’s side every chance he gets, in the way he tries his best to stay strong but an omnipresent sadness shines in his eyes nonetheless. 

There’s the slightest hint of dark circles starting to appear below his eyes, too, and dread curls in Jisung’s stomach every time he sees them. It’s probably due to all the stress he’s under, but there’s something foreboding about them nonetheless. 

But Jisung lets it slide, trusts Jeno to speak up if he needs help. Jaemin doesn’t seem concerned, at least, and that has to mean things are okay. They’ve been so attached at the hip lately that Jaemin would probably know if Jeno had so much as the sniffles before even he did. 

Yet over and over, little things stop Jisung from being completely sure Jeno’s alright. He flinches sometimes when people touch him, like he’s surprised to feel the contact even though they’re right in front of him. Other times he tilts his head and looks somewhere far away like he’s listening to things only he can hear, then squeezes his eyes shut as though he’s trying to pretend nothing’s happened. It’s scary to see, like watching a car crash from the side of the road, unable to help or stop it. Jisung has no idea how to talk to him, has no idea if Jeno wouldn’t just deny everything if he tried, but he knows something has to be done before it gets worse.

The incidents happen all too frequently- just two days later they’re eating lunch at Jaemin’s house, sitting in a heavy yet peaceful silence that’s become a new norm for them since their friends have started vanishing. They’re still trying their best to figure out what happened to them, but there’s a frustrating lack of research they can do into something like this. The only thing they know for sure is that it’s something magic, but that’s not overly helpful when magic is such a diverse and poorly researched topic- after all, most people don’t even think it exists. 

“Hey Jaemin-ah, did your neighbor get a dog?” Jeno asks casually as they eat.

Jaemin glances at him curiously. “No? I don’t think so, anyway. Did you see a dog on your way here?”

Jeno looks remarkably confused. “But I hear-” he stops and visibly pales before shutting his mouth with an audible _ click _.

“Jeno-hyung?” Jisung asks slowly. “Do you hear a dog barking?”

There’s absolutely no noise outside, not even the rumble of a car engine or a bird singing. Definitely no dog. 

Jeno shakes his head rapidly. “No, no, I must have been imagining things,” he says with a nervous laugh. “I’m fine, just ignore me.”

Jaemin watches him with concern clear in his eyes and laces their fingers together, squeezing Jeno’s hand comfortingly. “Jeno, baby, if something’s wrong, please tell us.”

There’s an extra weight to his words, an unspoken plea for Jeno not to end up like Renjun. Withdrawing from everything is the worst possible thing he could do right now. 

Jeno’s eyes are impossibly sad when he smiles at Jaemin, squeezing back. “It’s nothing, I promise! I just haven’t been sleeping a lot lately. I guess it’s messing with me.” 

Something about that sentence sounds oddly familiar to Jisung, but he can’t quite place it. 

Chenle catches Jisung’s eye and gives him a worried look, one that’s a quiet plea for them to _ do something, and soon _. 

Jisung knows they need to act before it’s too late, but he has no idea what to do. If even Jaemin can’t get Jeno to talk, nothing Jisung tries will work any better. 

Aside from what happened at lunch, the rest of the day passes in the unfortunate status quo they’ve developed- they research, find nothing useful, and get progressively more frustrated as the day goes on. Finally, just after the sun has set, Jeno tosses aside the book he’s been poring over for upwards of two hours now -an anthology of the supernatural, bought for a hundred thousand won at a rare bookseller- and claps his hands together. Everyone in the room turns to look at him.

“We need a break,” Jeno says, “From this and from each other.”

Jaemin opens his mouth to say something, but Jeno isn’t done. 

“You two-” he points at Chenle and Jisung- “can go home and spend some time together. Jaemin-ah and I will do the same. We can’t this consume us- we won’t accomplish anything.”

“Are you su-” Chenle begins, looking about as unhappy about it as Jisung feels.

“Yes,” Jeno replies before he’s even finished. “Seriously. No one’s gonna disappear, not as long as we’re together.” He smiles, then, comforting and certain and so very Jeno, and it’s enough for Jisung to reach out and gently grab Chenle’s hand. His boyfriend turns to look at him.

“It’ll be okay,” he says, tries to show the same confidence Jeno had effortlessly shown even with his dark circles and the loss of one of his boyfriends weighing down on him.

Judging by the look Chenle gives him, he by no means succeeds, but he still gives up, sighing and intertwining Jisung’s fingers with his. “Alright,” Chenle agrees. 

“A break might be good,” Jaemin says hesitantly. “But tomorrow, we meet back here and work twice as hard to make up for it.”

Only after he gets three affirmative responses does Jaemin finally shut the book he’d been reading.

Chenle and Jisung, now effectively kicked out, end up at Jisung’s house (“my parents are home,” Chenle had said, “And I don’t want to have to talk to them,”) lying in Jisung’s far-too-large-for-just-him bed, spread-eagled and touching only by their intertwined hands. Jisung’s house is as silent as always- the only sound to be heard is his and Chenle’s breathing and the faintest rumble of cars from outside. 

“Do you think everything’s gonna be okay with Jeno?” Jisung asks, voice soft so as not to disturb the delicate quiet around them. 

Chenle doesn’t bother to ask what he means- they’ve all noticed by now, and all four of them are terrified for their friend. “Yeah,” he replies. “It’s gonna be fine. You worry too much.” The words are light and teasing, but Chenle’s tone holds a touch of uncertainty. 

Jisung rolls over to look at him properly.

“As long as we stay together, right?” he says. 

Chenle manages a smile that, despite being small, lights up the dark. “Yeah.”

It’s easier to fall asleep after that. 

But in what feels like no time at all, Jisung wakes up to the sound of his phone ringing. Still mostly asleep, he doesn’t even bother to check the contact name before answering. “Hello?”

There’s nothing on the other end of the line but a weak sob, and the sound wakes Jisung up like a bucket of cold water to the face. He glances at the contact on his phone screen. “Jaemin-hyung? What’s wrong?” 

Jaemin lets out nothing but another sob, and Jisung sits up properly in bed, already planning how to best sneak out of the house so none of the nighttime maids will catch him. “Hyung, please tell me what’s wrong,” he tries again. 

(He knows already, of course, but Jisung is still holding out desperate hope that he’s wrong.)

“It’s Jeno, he, he-” Jaemin breaks off and lets out an anguished little noise that breaks Jisung’s heart to hear, “He’s gone too.”

Next to him, Chenle’s hand grabs his arm in an ice-cold, iron grip that has Jisung jolting in surprise. He wasn’t aware he was even awake, but Jisung can see the slightest glow of his eyes in the dark from the light of his phone. His eyes are wide and something impossibly sad is swirling in their depths. 

“We’re coming over,” Jisung decides. They never should’ve left each other in the first place. 

He and Chenle don’t speak as they throw on clothes and shoes and let themselves out the front door. Something about talking would just feel wrong, and they don’t need to talk, anyway. The two of them are operating on the same wavelength, perfectly in tune as they work towards their goal of getting to Jaemin as quickly as they can. 

They’re a third of the way to Jaemin’s house when Chenle skids to a stop on the sidewalk and fishes his phone out of his pocket. 

“Chenle-yah, what the hell is more important than this right now?” Jisung snaps, but he stops his run to wait for him. 

“Parents,” is all Chenle says before picking up the phone and saying something in Mandarin. 

So Jisung waits, anxiously pacing up and down the sidewalk as Chenle talks. He doesn’t know a word of Mandarin, but it’s clear from Chenle’s tone as he speaks that he’s not happy, and that just makes Jisung all the more more worried. 

When he finally hangs up the phone, Chenle lets out a harsh sigh and shoves his phone back into the pocket of his hoodie. 

“I have to go,” he says, voice terse and frustrated. “My parents want me home.”

“What?” Jisung demands. “Did you tell them-”

“I tried my best, but they won’t listen,” Chenle replies, and the look he gives he gives Jisung when their eyes meet is unspeakably guilty and devastated. 

Jisung immediately moves to sweep his boyfriend up in a tight hug. “It’s okay,” he says. “Jaemin-hyung won’t be mad.”

Chenle still looks conflicted, but he nods after a second. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he says, and it sounds more like an assurance to himself than to Jisung. 

He nods anyway. “Good luck with your family.”

“Text me how Jaemin’s doing,” Chenle says.

“Of course.”

There’s a moment of silence wherein Jisung debates with himself, and then decides that fuck it, he doesn’t care about seeming sappy anymore, not with everything that's been happening. “I love you, Lele.”

“I love you, Su- oh,” Chenle says, having spoken at the same time as him. 

Jisung can’t help it- he starts laughing. While the noise is more of an anxiety-filled cackle than anything joyful, it feels good nonetheless. Chenle presses a kiss to his cheek.

“Talk to you soon,” he says, a promise, then takes off running down the street. Jisung watches him for a moment, then turns on his heel and continues on his mission. 

When he rings the bell to Jaemin’s house a maid answers the door in seconds. She greets him, and Jisung offers her a weak smile and asks to go see Jaemin.

“Of course, I’ll go get him,” the maid replies cheerily, and invites him into the foyer to wait while she darts upstairs. 

So he does, and there’s a period wherein time stretches slow and languid as Jisung waits, counting each and every second until he can bolt up the stairs and see Jaemin. Finally, after a period that was likely about thirty seconds but felt more like centuries, the maid reappears, quickly trotting downstairs to speak to him.

“He doesn’t seem to be in there,” the maid tells him as soon as she’s in front of him, clearly confused, and Jisung’s heart drops to some dark and nameless place below his feet. “You can come in, if you like-”

“No, that’s okay,” he replies. His voice comes out sounding far away, like it’s underwater. “If you see him, though, please have him call me.”

The maid nods and smiles. “Of course, sir.”

Renjun’s disappearance had already rendered Jaemin lost, clinging to Jeno and trying his best to hide the rapidly spreading cracks in his heart, and Jisung knows he wouldn’t have lasted long with both of them taken from him. Whatever curse this is, at least it’s benevolent enough not to leave Jaemin alone. 

Jisung, though, isn’t so lucky. What he really wants right now is Chenle, but he knows when his parents need him for something, it could be days before he’s allowed to even text again. At the moment, he’s entirely alone. 

He barely makes it a step outside the house before he’s crying. 

He collapses into the wall next to Jaemin’s door, pressing a hand over his face and desperately attempts to quell the tears dripping down his cheeks. But as he tries to stop the grief, self-loathing surfaces in force, a much harder feeling to quell. If he’d researched harder, if he hadn’t left Jaemin and Jeno alone last night, if, if, _ if _-

Jisung sinks into a crouch as sobs wrack his body. He’s not sure if the tears are of anger or sorrow at this point, but they come endlessly, a newly-opened floodgate of grief. He cries for everyone- Mark, who must have suffered so much alone; Donghyuck, who lost his other half and never learned why; Renjun, who saw it all coming; Jeno, who slowly fell apart and never told a soul; and Jaemin, who lost everything dear to him in a span of weeks.

He cries for Chenle and himself too, alone in the world now except for each other, unable to even take joy in each other’s company until they’re sure they won’t lose each other, too. 

It can’t possibly get worse than this.

(Can it?)

  


_After_

There’s three days left until the eclipse, and Jisung is sleeping less than ever. He’s exhausted beyond belief, and his eyes are always drooping shut no matter what he’s doing. But the moment his eyes shut completely, the moment blissful rest finally seems within reach, faint memories of _ something _ come rushing in and scare him back to some semblance of wakefulness. 

He still can’t recall what he sees every time his eyes close; he’s just sure it’s terrifying, too much so to even think about. Trying to remember is a fruitless ordeal, as the only thing his mind provides him with is vague images of something bright and a sharp tug of atavistic dread deep in his gut, sometimes so fierce it leaves him so anxious afterward he’s almost thrown up a couple of times. Not exactly helpful. 

The Incidents have changed form, at least, into something that’s thankfully much more manageable. Rather than seeing himself around every corner, now Jisung just sees an object, always in his peripherals and just out of easy sight. 

It’s a rose in a vase, which would be innocuous enough, except the rose is perpetually on fire. The first time Jisung had seen it, fire crackling away in his peripheral vision, he’d let out a noise that was most definitely not a startled scream and whirled around to put it out, only to watch as the vase and rose disappeared like it had never been there at all. 

He’d let out a relieved sigh, heart still hammering away in his chest, and walked up to the end table where the rose had been resting. There was of course no trace of its presence, but Jisung could swear he smelt the faintest hint of acrid smoke in the air. 

It shows up again when Jisung is getting lunch, in a cylindrical black vase this time and with the same vibrant flames still licking the petals of a blood-red rose. He looks at it. It disappears. 

This becomes routine. Jisung catches sight of the rose, never in the same vase twice and always burning without burning. He looks at it, it vanishes. Rinse and repeat. It’s strange, certainly, but far better than seeing himself every time he turns a corner. 

It’s an odd skill to have developed, but Jisung’s gotten almost too good at pretending the vase isn’t there at all, at holding a perfect poker face as he banishes the hallucination. He’s seen maids put their hands right where the fire is and learned to resist crying out for them to move, accepted that it will be the first thing he sees in the morning and the last thing he sees before he tries to fall asleep at night. By this point the vase is a more constant presence in his life than his parents. 

When he’s not vanishing the vase and being generally exhausted, Jisung’s been thinking a lot these days. It’s mostly at night, due to him being both unable and unwilling to sleep, and he’s been wondering a lot about what could have possibly happened to his friends. After a lot of thinking that lead nowhere, he’s starting to draw parallels between whatever’s happening to him and the way Jeno acted before his disappearance. 

The insomnia, the Incidents, all of it matches up with what Jisung’s experiencing. And if he thinks even further back, Mark had the same issue with his sleep right before he vanished. Whatever this thing is hasn’t skipped him, it seems; it’s just taking a little longer than normal. 

But that means, eventually, Jisung will disappear too. The strange, inexplicable curse that’s pervaded his friend group will come for him at some point. It could be any time now- he’s certainly suffered enough. 

He should be afraid of it, but all Jisung feels at the realization is relief. 

The scarier thought, honestly, is that it won’t, that nothing will happen and Jisung will be left here, all alone and falling apart in slow motion. He’s already lasted longer than all of his friends. Hopefully he won’t have to wait much more. 

_Before_

Jisung and Chenle have now officially spent forty-eight hours straight together. Chenle had shown up at his house not fifteen minutes after learning about Jaemin, face ashen and clothes rumpled, and Jisung had resolved right then and there not to leave him alone until the light was back in his eyes. One of them has to keep smiling through all of this. 

From what he understands, to say Chenle’s parents are pissed about his impromptu escape would be an understatement. They’re furious, and even if Jisung wasn’t terrified of leaving his boyfriend alone for any time longer than necessary he’d still let him come over for as long as he needed to escape their wrath. It’s not like Jisung’s parents are around to tell him no. 

Chenle has spent enough time at Jisung’s house that a fair amount of his stuff has ended up having a permanent home beside Jisung’s, and Chenle certainly has no qualms about stealing his boyfriend’s clothes if necessary, so in theory they can stay together for as long as they want to.

And they certainly want to, even if most of the time they spend together is less meaningful interaction and more shared anxiety and grief.

They end up lying next to each other in Jisung’s bed, on their phones and with hands and legs loosely twined together. They don’t talk, but every so often Jisung squeezes Chenle’s hand in quiet reassurance, and there’s a quiet sort of peace to it all. They’ll process the loss properly in the morning, when they can look at the situation with more logical minds.

When they finally do go to sleep, far too late considering they likely won’t sleep long past the sunrise, they end up curled up in each other's arms. It’s more borne out of a desire for comfort than anything romantic- a quiet reassurance to one another that they won’t disappear, not when they’re so tightly wrapped up in each other’s arms. 

Jisung wakes up to an empty bed still slightly warm from Chenle’s presence. A fierce spike of anxiety curls in his gut before Jisung’s more rational mind kicks in, reminding him that just because he can’t see Chenle it doesn’t mean he’s gone.

Chenle tends to get up earlier than him most days; he’s likely raiding Jisung’s pantry for breakfast. Still, Jisung wants to be sure. He forces himself up out of bed and heads downstairs to the kitchen, flicking on light switches as he walks. 

“Chenle-yah,” he begins, yawning, “If you’re getting food, get some for me too.”

He pokes his head into the pantry. No one’s there, and everything is as untouched as he’d left it last night. 

Odd. Maybe Chenle went elsewhere. He likes to go walking sometimes to think, so maybe he went to go do that and snoop through Jisung’s house, judging the internal decor. Jisung sets off looking for him, glancing into every room and even closet he passes.

He steadfastly ignores the anxiety bubbling in his gut. Everything is fine. There’s no reason to panic, not yet. 

He still avoids the fencing room. The door looks undisturbed, and Jisung refuses to go in there anymore. Chenle has no reason to be there, anyway; he’s never fenced in his life. 

Eventually Jisung winds up back at his room, no closer to finding his boyfriend than he was when he started his search. He’s pretty sure he’s never lost him for this long before- Chenle’s not the most subtle of people, and he doesn’t exactly have a reason to be hiding from Jisung. At a time like this, it’d be a cruel prank, one Chenle wouldn’t pull. 

(He knows where Chenle is, deep down, but he won’t believe it. Not yet.)

Jisung steps back in the room, peeks into the adjacent bathroom and finds it as empty as it was ten minutes ago. Frowning, he steps out of the bathroom and glances around his room again, but nothing’s changed. 

As he looks around, Jisung notices Chenle’s Apple Watch sitting on the bedside table next to where he slept. Upon seeing it, Jisung’s stomach fills with a profound dread, almost painful in its sudden intensity. 

The thing is, Chenle _ only _ takes that watch off to sleep and shower. The first thing he does in the morning is put it on. The fact that he hasn’t means that Jisung can’t deny the truth any longer, not with the evidence so clearly in front of him. 

Chenle’s gone, vanished in the night while Jisung slept, likely not half an hour before he’d woken up. Jisung had seen it coming. He had hoped against hope it wouldn’t happen, but he can recognize a pattern when he sees one. 

At some point he sank to his knees, collapses as if in prayer on his bedroom floor. Tears are leaking down his cheeks but he doesn’t feel them, doesn’t feel anything but numb and oh-so-_ empty _.

The worst part is that he’d never gotten to say goodbye. That he’d never gotten to say all of the sappy things he feels when he sees him, the things Chenle teases him nonstop for saying despite loving to hear them. 

He doesn’t tell Chenle he loves him often enough- hell, he doesn’t tell any of his friends he loves them often enough, too scared of sounding sappy and awkward when he knows they know. He’d tell his friends he loved them with chocolates and sappy poetry, serenades, _ anything _ so long as it brought them back. He’d sell his soul, undertake any task on earth to get them back.

But he can’t do any of that. His friends have vanished, now even Chenle’s gone, and _ fuck _, Jisung’s all alone again for the first time in five years. 

It’s like there’s a hole in his chest, but rather than his heart having been ripped out, it’s his soul, removed piece by piece until there’s nothing left but a gaping abyss in its place. He truly has nothing left now. 

Jisung doesn’t know what to do, isn’t sure there’s anything left to do. Researching has proved useless, and he still has no idea what took his friends or how. Nothing he could do anymore could possibly fix this. 

All he can do is grieve, because there truly is no other option left, and desperately, foolishly hope. He hopes he won’t be left alone. He hopes this is all just some nightmare he’ll soon wake up from. 

(He hopes they’re happy, wherever they are.)

  


_After_

The morning of the eclipse dawns beautiful and sunny, perfect for viewing. The house is quietly abuzz today, as even the maids will be allowed to go out onto the front lawn of the house to watch the spectacle. Jisung is handed a pair of eclipse glasses almost as soon as he steps out of his room. 

Jisung spends most of his morning lazing around the house, having nothing to do but wait. He spends a truly ridiculous amount of time staring into his fridge trying to pick an appropriate soda to drink while he watches the eclipse. 

If he tries hard enough, he can pretend his friends are just a little late to the eclipse-viewing party. Renjun’s finishing up a sketch of his, too stubborn to leave it until he gets everything just right; Mark and Donghyuck are buying street food and got held up in line. Jaemin and Jeno are too busy being the disgustingly cute two-thirds-of-a-throuple that they are to be bothered to walk fast, and Chenle’s late to things so often it’s no longer a cause for concern. 

It works for a second, but then Jisung  _ remembers  _ and the pain doubles in intensity. 

He’s almost used to it by now, though, and pain has shifted from something sharp to a dull ache. Being sad is almost his default, a gray blanket of fog covering every though he has. 

Jisung is also now thoroughly versed in the art of distracting himself from thoughts of his friends. He re-opens his fridge and stares blankly at its contents, reconsidering his previous soda decision. It’s just distracting enough to keep the worse thoughts at bay. 

When afternoon finally comes, the house gradually empties as everyone heads outside to watch the spectacle. Jisung’s parents are of course nowhere to be seen. Even if they were home, he doubts they’d be watching- they aren’t the kind of people to appreciate nature on their own time. 

It’s not hard for Jisung to sneak out onto the roof of his house right around the time of the eclipse, soda in one hand and eclipse glasses in the other. He’s one of the last to head outside, which he’d done on purpose so no one would try and talk to him. He could watch on his deck with the maids, but Jisung kind of wants to be alone for this, so the roof it is. 

God, he’s tired. Everything around him is shifting in and out of focus as he looks at it, and there are black spots swimming at the corners of his vision. Everything is too bright and too loud and he kind of wants to just go to sleep right there on the roof. 

But dammit, he’s going to watch this eclipse if it kills him. He gets comfortable on the roof, laying down and trying in vain to stop the shingles from digging into his back too badly. 

It’s a truly indescribable experience, one of atavistic fear and illogical, unquellable dread, to watch the sun get slowly swallowed up. Jisung observes the sky getting darker even with the sun still fully visible with fascination. At first, it seems like nothing’s happened, but then Jisung blinks and realizes the sky is darker than it was five minutes ago, that everything suddenly seems duller as the artificial night sets in. 

Absently, he notices that the birds have stopped singing. Everything is so bizarre- the world has become a poorly-rendered dream, a painting with the proportions ever so slightly  _ wrong _ . It’s beautiful and terrifying and Jisung couldn’t possibly fall asleep anymore, wouldn’t dream of missing even a second of something as monumental as this. 

He wishes Mark was here. He’d know all kinds of random facts about the eclipse, and he’d share them as Donghyuck teased him relentlessly about being a nerd, pretending not to listen but in fact hanging on to every word he said. He wishes Renjun were here to watch and then paint the scene when he got home, rendering the eclipse somehow more beautiful on canvas than even its breathtaking reality. He wishes Jeno were here to squawk at them to keep their eclipse glasses on because  _ eye damage is no joke _ , and he wishes Jaemin was there to call him boring and steal his glasses every five minutes. 

He wishes Chenle were there, too, stealing sips of Jisung’s soda and complaining about the flavor despite having his own, making fun of every observation Jisung makes about the eclipse while he’s curled into Jisung’s side and resting his head on his shoulder and probably thinking the exact same things Jisung’s saying. 

The mental image he’s constructed is so realistic that for a moment Jisung almost thinks it’s real, a mirage only inches out of reach, and the he snaps back to reality and remembers he’s alone on the rooftop. He tries to ignore the sting behind his eyes as he returns to staring at the rapidly-darkening sky. 

When the moon finally begins to cover the sun, the sky turns a strange rusty sort of red, a sunset at two in the afternoon, and the sun looks almost like a over-bright waning moon. It’s impossibly beautiful to witness, even if Jisung’s most primal instincts are screaming at him that something is terribly wrong with it all. He kind of understands how people used to think eclipses were precursors to the apocalypse, now. 

And then, at long last, the moon overtakes the sun, and for a moment everything is black as midnight. The world is dead silent; time has stopped and Jisung has left reality for the briefest of moments, transported somewhere else where everything is beautifully, intrinsically off. 

He stares. The desire to take off his glasses and see it for himself is so strong that Jisung subconsciously reaches up and nearly yanks them off before remembering that he’ll go blind if he tries. Instead he pushes them further up the bridge of his nose like he can see straight through the lenses the closer they are to his eyes, staring unblinkingly at the sight before him. 

Is it supposed to last this long? Jisung doesn’t know. It feels like everything has been too dark and too quiet for far too long for it to be normal. Like maybe the world will just stick like this, eternally dark and silent. With everything that’s happened to him in the past month, it certainly wouldn’t be too far-fetched of a concept. 

He looks away from the sun for a moment to grab his soda, and it’s like a spell is broken- reality feels somehow realer again, all dull and mundane and unforgiving sharp edges. He finds his drink in the dark and grips it, starts to untwist its cap. 

There’s no sensation of dizziness or faint, no physical precursors to what happens next. Like a light switch being flipped, like a strike of lightning, Jisung slumps onto the roof and passes out.

  
  


_Now_

It’s dark. In the distance, there’s a rumble of thunder. Jisung comes to a groggy awareness and feels the tickle of something soft underneath him that’s distinctly unlike the gritty surface of the shingles he was just laying on. 

He opens his eyes to find the sky filled with thunderclouds, a remarkable juxtaposition from the sunny skies he’d just been looking at. The clouds darken everything so much that even if the eclipse was still happening -and Jisung doubts that very much- it would be likely unnoticeable. The air is thick with humidity and the clouds hang so low that the atmosphere feels oppressive, almost choking, and there’s an undercurrent of something electric in the air that sings of an oncoming storm.

A cool wind, one sharp and heavy with the promise of rain, whips across his face and makes him shiver. Jisung sits up and glances around to find he’s in a field of high grass, with the distant tops of much taller trees peeking over deep green stalks. It’s nowhere he’s ever been before- Jisung’s experience with nature only extends to the perfectly-manicured park a few blocks from his house. 

Cautiously, he gets to his feet and takes in the seemingly endless expanse of grass around him. The trees are farther away than he’d first assumed, likely an hour’s walk away. There’s not a single sign of civilization around him. 

Jisung would wonder how he got here, but he’s not sure a good explanation exists. Nothing he could figure out, at least. The question of how he’s going to get home is just as daunting. 

He starts walking just for something to do, heading in the general direction of the trees. A check of his pockets -he’s wearing different clothes, oddly enough, a jean jacket and matching pants- confirms that he has no phone and is thus entirely cut off from civilization. 

Under any other circumstances Jisung would be panicking, probably curled up in a fetal position in the midst of the grass and crying. He should be, really- he’s out in the middle of nowhere with no way to communicate with the rest of the world and no supplies. 

But, inexplicably, something about this feels  _ right _ in a way Jisung can’t quite explain. He doesn’t feel out of place here, and although he has no idea where he’s walking, there’s a quiet certainty in his mind that he’ll reach a destination eventually. If anything, he feels less anxious than he has in weeks.

It occurs to him then, the conclusion coming together so easily that he’s likely subconsciously known it for a while, that this is what happened to his friends. It has to be. The hallucinations, the insomnia, and then the inevitable disappearance to wherever this is- it all fits. 

...Or maybe he passed out, fell off the roof, hit his head, and is now in some kind of weird coma dream, but Jisung is mostly sure it’s not that. Mostly. 

Everything feels too real for it to be a dream, anyway. He’s shivering slightly from the breeze, and there’s a slight ache forming in his legs as he walks, an unfortunate reminder that Jisung desperately needs to start exercising again. He keeps going regardless, moving tirelessly towards the trees that never seem to get any closer. 

And then, after an untold time of walking, the scenery unchanging around him, he notices them- six figures standing in the grass. Jisung can’t see their faces. He doesn’t have to. 

He’d run towards them, but his legs are frozen to the ground he’s standing on and it’s taking every inch of his strength not to collapse to his knees right then and there. The tears that had been nowhere to seen not twenty minutes ago have now sprung into his eyes, prickling and hot and refusing to fall until he’s absolutely  _ sure _ this isn’t just another cruel joke of the universe. 

Though they’re little more than silhouettes in the grass, Jisung can easily pick out who’s who. He can see the faintest lines of Jeno, Renjun and Jaemin’s hands, all intertwined, and he can’t help but break out in a wide smile at the sight. 

It’s Chenle who moves first, starts sprinting towards him with his arms spread wide like wings, and suddenly Jisung is unfrozen. All he can do is bolt until they’re close enough to touch, and in a split second Jisung is there and clutching Chenle so tight there’s no way he can breathe but he doesn’t care because  _ he’s here he’s here he’s here.  _

Someone lets out a sob. Jisung buries his face in Chenle’ hair -it’s fluorescent pink, when did that happen?- and presses a kiss to the top of his head. Chenle’s arms have found their way around his waist, and they’re pressed so close together at this point that they might as well be one entity. Jisung honestly wouldn’t mind, so long as he’d never have to leave Chenle again. 

“Oh my god, you’re here,” Chenle says almost reverently, gripping Jisung’s wrists in both hands like he might disappear without something to ground him. “You made it too, thank god-”

“I’m here, I’m here, please never leave me again,” Jisung begs, and it’s the kind of sappy statement Chenle would normally tease him for weeks over, but all he does now is nod fiercely. “Never.”

Everyone else finally reaches them, having run slower than Chenle’s mad dash, and Jisung’s immediately yanked into the center of a seven-person group hug. There’s a chorus of “Jisung-ah!” and the sudden weight pressing into him from all sides is so heavy he almost falls over a few times, but Jisung couldn’t stop smiling if he tried. 

“I missed you guys,” he says after a minute, when he’s finally given space to breathe. “So, so much.” It’s the understatement of the year, but judging by the way he’s immediately hugged again by Jaemin, by the way Chenle looks at him with so much affection in his eyes it’s startling, they understand what he’s trying to say. 

“We’re sorry,” Mark says in a tone that’s truly thick with guilt, “We didn’t know how to leave here once we arrived, otherwise we’d have brought you with us. You must’ve been alone for such a long time-”

“It’s okay,” Jisung tells him, because it is. He knows they'd never abandon him, not on purpose. “I made it, right?”

“And now you’re here with us,” Jaemin says with a grin, looping an arm around Jisung’s shoulders. “Forever.”

Jisung honestly can’t imagine anything better. 

“But how did all of this happen? What is this place? How did I- you get here?”

Everyone exchanges glances. Mark finally speaks up. “We don’t know, actually,” he replies, sheepish. “We all just woke up here one day. No one remembers exactly how. And we don't know what this place is either, just that it's not our old reality.”

He’s glowing in a way Jisung has never seen before- even at his happiest, Mark always had the slightest tinge of exhaustion in his eyes, to his stature. But here, for what might be the first time, he looks entirely unburdened and happy, one hand casually twined with Donghyuck’s and the faintest quirk of a smile on his lips. 

Although it was unimaginably painful to lose him, Jisung quietly thinks that maybe it was okay if his friend could gain so much from it. The part of him that loves his friends and wants them to be happy sings far louder in his mind than the quiet, skulking voice that hisses of betrayal and abandonment. They’re happy and free and he’s with them again- there’s nothing more in Jisung’s life that he could want. Besides, it wasn’t their fault they left him in the first place. 

“You guys- you all saw  _ stuff  _ before that, right?” Jisung asks. He knows everyone did, logically, but he still wants to assuage that last little seed of doubt in his mind telling him he’s just crazy. 

He receives six nods and varying noises of affirmation. “What did you get?” Jaemin asks curiously. “Mine was floating books- I almost fainted the first time I saw one.”

“That’s nothing,” Chenle scoffs. “At least you didn’t have to keep watching random things get set on fire.” 

“I still don’t get how no one said anything about it but me,” Jeno adds with a little laugh. “I thought I was going insane.”

It’s disorienting to watch them speak so lightly of hallucinations that haunted them for weeks and ripped them away from everything they know. Then again, they’ve probably had far more time to process and talk through everything than Jisung has. 

“I saw myself, at first,” Jisung says. “And that was scary as hell-” There’s a few sympathetic noises at that- “but after a while I just saw a flaming rose everywhere.”

“I saw that too! We match,” Chenle laughs. Jisung smiles weakly but can’t bring himself to do anything else, the memories and stress of it all still too fresh in his mind. 

“God, even your magic curse hallucinations are the same- how married are you?” Donghyuck teases. 

“And no one told anyone?” Jisung asks, almost incredulous. In a group like theirs it’s truly surprising, but he supposes the circumstances were special ones. 

He receives six variations of a shrug and head shake in reply. 

“None of us wanted to worry anyone,” Renjun says wryly. “We all either thought it was stress or wanted to solve the issue with the disappearances before we mentioned anything.”

Jisung shakes his head in disbelief. His friends truly are the most self-sacrificial group of idiots on earth. 

“We’re not going to do that anymore, though,” Mark says with the kind of authority that suggests they’ve talked about it prior to this, and five nods follow his words. 

Jisung is glad they’ve made such a choice- their group isn’t made to handle secrets, especially not ones so important. “That’s good.”

“By the way, where do you guys even stay out here?” He can’t imagine that they just sit out in the field, but there’s certainly nothing around that they could be living in. 

Renjun points to somewhere out of sight. “There’s a house that way. If we walk towards it and want to find it, we do.”

“It’s really nice,” Chenle adds brightly. “Like, as nice as our houses used to be.”

“And if we want something, it appears for us,” Donghyuck explains. “It’s amazing.” 

“Speaking of which, it’s kind of cold out here, and we should get Jisung-ah settled,” Mark says. 

They walk for what must be only a scant few minutes before a house appears on the horizon. The closer they get to it, to more apparent it becomes that it’s truly a mansion, likely nicer than even Jisung’s house. And if it really does give them whatever they want like Donghyuck said, they’ll be set for life. 

It’s literally every dream Jisung’s ever had come true- he gets to live with his friends, entirely free from the expectations of reality, in what’s essentially a paradise. His cheeks hurt from smiling so hard, but he can’t stop at this point, not with warm, electric euphoria coursing through his veins and overwhelming his mind. This might be the happiest he’s ever felt in his life. 

Jisung walks so fast he’s almost running, easily taking the lead in their cluster. 

When they finally get close to the house -it’s  _ huge _ , Jisung could and will probably get lost in it- Mark steps up to the front door, a grand, hardwood thing with an inexplicable skull knocker on it, and sticks a key into the lock. The door swings open at his touch, and Jisung eagerly moves to enter the house, dragging Chenle with him by their joined hands. 

He doesn’t even make it one step over the threshold before he sees nothing but white.

  
  


____________________

Jisung wakes up and wishes he hadn’t. 

He’s back in his room, lying on his bed and still in the same clothes he wore to watch the eclipse. A brief check of his phone, thankfully still in his pants pocket, reveals that almost exactly a day has passed. 

The last thing he remembers is stepping into the house, holding hands with Chenle, and then a disconcerting nothingness. He’s sure  _ something  _ happened, of course -he had to have gotten inside from the roof somehow- but it’s like there’s a hole in his head where his memories are supposed to be.

Normally Jisung would be utterly heartbroken or furious that he’d been so close to being with his friends again, only to get yanked away as soon as he’d finally found them. But he’s eerily calm instead, unable to muster up any kind of anger and instead feeling almost as if he has some sort of backup plan. Like everything will be alright, even if he’s not sure how.

Without consciously meaning to, he finds himself standing up and leaving his room. Along the way he picks up a few objects- Donghyuck’s leather jacket, a sketchbook of Renjun’s, Chenle’s watch. The first he drapes over his shoulders, the second he enfolds in an arm, and the third he straps around his wrist. They’re comforting to hold despite being a poor replacement for the people they belong to. 

As he heads past the hallway that leads to his practice room, Jisung pauses. He glances down the hallway, something he’d been too afraid to do for weeks, and feels nothing as he looks at the blank walls in front of him. It’s freeing, somehow, but it’s also not his final destination. Jisung resumes his walk. 

He steps into the dining room almost on autopilot to find it almost entirely unchanged from the way it was on his birthday. Same deep cobalt walls and golden crown moldings, same handcrafted wooden ceiling, same landscape painting gracing one wall, same chandelier twinkling in the morning sunlight. The table is almost empty, save for one thing resting on the middle of the table as a centerpiece. 

Casually, cooly, Jisung stuffs his hands in his pockets and moves to examine the painting. It’s interesting to focus on it and take in its details after so long of just skimming over it every time he sees it, almost like looking at it for the first time all over again. Something about the scene it depicts seems vaguely familiar to Jisung- it’s in the painting’s dark, stormy skies and long stretches of empty grassland painted in wide strokes of emerald, in the way it looks close to real life but remains ever so slightly surreal. 

The rose is in the corner of his eye again, moving just enough to hold his attention. It’s in a simple green vase today, the glass bright and semi-transparent. Orange flame engulfs the vermillion flower in the same way it does every time, eternally burning but never so much as singeing one of the petals. 

Jisung very carefully avoids looking at it directly. 

He doesn’t understand how any of this works, not now and maybe not ever. But he sees the rose for what it is, now- another chance. A permanent one, if he’s lucky. He just has to use it correctly. 

Jisung steps towards the table and reaches out, delicately cupping the rose in one hand and letting the stem thread through his middle and ring fingers. The fire doesn’t spread to his hand, nor does he feel its burn. He finally looks at it, watches the flames spring brighter as if in response to his gaze, crackling silently and heatlessly. 

Jisung exhales, lets his eyes slip shut for the briefest of moments.

When he opens them, he’s in the field again, and six smiles are waiting for him. 

Before he can be swallowed by hugs, he holds out the sketchbook to Renjun. “I have your stuff,” he says, moving to slide Donghyuck’s jacket off with his free hand. 

“I love you,” Chenle says, immediately commandeering Jisung’s wrist to take his watch back. 

“Only because I give you stuff?” Jisung replies, mock-offended. 

“Why else would I?” Chenle asks innocently, but when Jisung pouts at him he drapes himself over his boyfriend’s shoulder and kisses his cheek. 

Donghyuck plucks his jacket off of Jisung’s arm and immediately wraps it around Mark’s shoulders, who says nothing but snuggles into it and offers Donghyuck a peck in thanks. 

“God, you two are disgusting,” Renjun says, but any weight his words might have had is negated by the fact that Jaemin and Jeno are each holding his hand and have an arm around his waist. 

“Says you,” Chenle replies, and the two start cheerfully bickering over who has the better boyfriend. 

Anyone else might think they’re the weirdest group of friends out there, but Jisung wouldn’t have it any other way. 

And this time, when Jisung steps over the threshold to the house, he doesn’t vanish. 

“Welcome home,” Marks says jokingly.

“That’s an awful line- this isn’t some cheesy movie,” Donghyuck snipes immediately. 

“Hey, we should have a movie night,” Jaemin suggests brightly. “As a welcome party for Jisung-ah.”

“I call dibs on picking the first movie,” Chenle crows, to which Renjun immediately protests. 

They haven’t even made it five steps inside the house. The hallway is buzzing with noise as everyone argues over movie choices like it’s life-and-death. It’s the most commotion Jisung has heard in weeks, all messy and too-loud and secretly affectionate. 

Jisung smiles. He really is home. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there! I have no idea if this is any good, but I hope you enjoyed nonetheless! 
> 
> Please let me know if you liked it, and have an excellent day/night <3
> 
> There's not much on it yet, but my [Twitter ](https://twitter.com/CelSilences)  
and my [ CuriousCat ](https://curiouscat.me/CelestialSilences))


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